The Daily Flash
[2] The group was composed of guitarist/singer Steve Lalor, lead guitarist Doug Hastings, bass player/singer Don MacAllister and drummer Jon Keliehor.
MacAllister was in a bluegrass trio called The Willow Creek Ramblers; Lalor had dropped out of college in Ohio in January 1963, spent some time in San Francisco where he had met future core members of Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service, then traveled north to Seattle, where he made some good connections and ended up appearing regularly for a time on Seattle Center Hootenanny which aired on KING-TV.
The band broke up and MacAllister convinced him to move back north and form a group in Seattle with another guitarist, Doug Hastings, still in college at the time and occasionally sitting in with another local outfit, The Dynamics.
They devised a sound system that suited their tight harmonies, pioneered new venues and aimed beyond a teen audience, and aligned themselves with the emergent hippie counterculture.
The B-side was originally supposed to be Dino Valenti's "Birdses", but Saul shelved that, releasing the funkier "Jack of Diamonds," recorded at the same Tacoma, Washington studio favored by The Wailers.
The band headed to Los Angeles to record a stronger version of "Queen Jane Approximately," but that also met a lukewarm response in the market.
On the way south they headlined a pair of Chet Helms-promoted shows at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom, supported both nights by the Rising Sons (a band that included future stars Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal); the additional act on Friday night was a pre-Janis Joplin version of Big Brother & The Holding Company and on Saturday The Charlatans (featuring Dan Hicks).
[2] The band—now based in Los Angeles but probably more popular in San Francisco and viewed as hometown heroes in Seattle—traveled the West Coast, supporting acts such as The Byrds, The Doors and The Turtles in Los Angeles and playing repeatedly in San Francisco at the Avalon Ballroom on bills with such bands as Country Joe & The Fish and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.
[2] Early in 1967 their second single was released: Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker's "French Girl" b/w Dave Van Ronk's "Green Rocky Road" on the L.A.-based UNI Records.
Greene arranged the band's first East Coast tour to coincide with the release, kicking off with a successful one-month residency at the Club Ondine in Manhattan.
After that they supported Van Morrison on a short tour, but in late October this lineup also split, with MacAllister and Tarwater going one way and Lalor and Dey another.
[2] MacAllister and Tarwater went on to a band originally called 'Nirvana' and later 'Two Guitars, Piano, Drum and Darryl'; its other members were Jeff Simmons (previously with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention), Ron Woods (formerly of the Seattle-area band The Dynamics, later a Buddy Miles sideman), and former Iron Butterfly vocalist Darryl De Loach; they had one single on Atlantic Records and recorded the soundtrack for the film Pit Stop.
Keliehor's career has been much more varied, ranging from an appearance on Jeff Simmons' album Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up to composing music for contemporary dance, ballet, film, television and theater.
